


Honour hath no skill in surgery

by Naraht



Series: In that dark womb [4]
Category: Return to Night - Mary Renault
Genre: 1940s, Adultery, Aging, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 18:08:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,119
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6387124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naraht/pseuds/Naraht
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having given in to the inevitable, Hilary and David ponder the future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Honour hath no skill in surgery

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lilliburlero](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lilliburlero/gifts).



_Bethnal Green Hospital_  
_Two months later_

David lay beside her in the narrow bed, smoking a cigarette. Hilary shifted awkwardly, pressed up against the wall, its flaking paint rough against her bare back. Sharing a residents' room for the night had seemed simple and obvious when they were both under thirty, an inconvenience willingly to be borne; it did not seem that way now.

"If you could just move over..." 

She plucked the cigarette from his fingers and inhaled deeply. 

"You asked me that ten minutes ago. If I move any further I'll be on the floor." 

"I suppose we're fatter than we were then," Hilary mused.

She traced a shape through the dark curls of his chest hair, connecting a few of the small nevi that now were sprinkled across his skin. In fact, although lacking Julian's Apollonian proportions, he was in rather decent trim for a man of his age.

"Speak for yourself, poppet. I'm just used to sleeping in a nicer bed." He took the cigarette back from her. "There's always my flat. I've told you before. Jenny never comes up to London during the week."

"You know I'm on call tonight."

"You're not always on call. We could sleep together in comfort for a night or two per week at least."

He was, she thought, not going to let it rest. He had suggested this before but she had always managed some offhanded deflection. Now there was no getting around it.

"I just don't like the idea," she said. "I know you'll say I'm irrational, but it's the sort of thing one does with one's mistress."

David seemed amused. "But darling," he said, "you are my mistress. Aren't you?"

She could feel a sudden chill prickling at her skin. No doubt it had been a mistake to lie uncovered for so long. She tugged at the sheet, and came away with only a corner, for David was mostly on top of it. In the edge of her vision she could see the faded _BETHNAL GREEN HOSPITAL_ stamp.

"I hadn't thought of it that way," she said.

There was a long silence. David stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. Hilary pondered the respective difficulty of asking him to pass her the packet versus simply sitting up and reaching across him. In the end she did neither.

"I've had a letter from Julian," she said finally. "He's being demobilised; he'll be home in a month."

She had thought that she was watching David carefully. But, by the dim light of the small bedside lamp, she could discern no reaction. He remained as impassive as he would have been if one of his patients had suddenly begun to haemorrhage on the table.

"Of course you knew it was coming." He exhaled thoughtfully. "Well. Does this change anything?"

In fact the letter had arrived three days ago. After opening it she had slid it back into the envelope almost entirely unread, unable to bring herself to think about its contents. Julian had written a few laboured sentences of congratulation on her new post: those familiar crossings-out had brought an image of its composition unbidden to her minds' eye. Julian leaning over a desk, lit by a solitary spot, as if onstage. That image had been the most compelling part of the letter. 

It had said nothing about the practicalities, where he would live, where she would live, what sort of future they might build together. It had only said - and this at length - how much he missed her and longed to be with her again. It was the omissions, and not the content, that had brought tears to her eyes.

"I can't see how it wouldn't."

David scratched his chest and then put his hand behind his head, unselfconsciously revealing armpit hair shot with grey. "You had an understanding."

"In theory, yes. But in practice it's different. I can't just say... he would think..." 

She trailed off miserably.

"What?"

Hilary felt a tightness at her throat that was almost unsupportable. "He would think that I loved you."

There was a long silence. Outside the window, in the courtyard six floors below, someone was shouting. Now Hilary sat up quickly and leaned across David for her packet of cigarettes. She lit one, drew on it hard, then let her hand drop to her side, afraid it might be shaking. 

David was looking up at her. Hilary was conscious now of the visible sag of her breasts, the fold of flesh and skin that her pose had conjured across an abdomen no longer taut with youth. Women over forty, one imagined he would say, ought always to wear clothes.

But if he felt this way he gave no sign of it. He only reached up and briefly touched her cheek.

"Well, I'm madly in love with you," he said wryly. "Hadn't you noticed?"

"Be serious, David," said Hilary.

 _After all,_ she thought with relief, _it's a matter of comparison, isn't it? Jenny must have a good five stone on me. And she's not so much younger._

"Think about this rationally, poppet," said David. "From the start we knew that both of us were married. Julian, Jenny, there's no difference. I'm not willing to allow it to get in the way. I'd assumed you felt the same."

"You two have an understanding?"

She had never asked before. She had not wanted to know anything about the intimate state of their marriage.

David paused before answering. "Implicitly."

A reasonably handsome consultant surgeon, not so far into middle age, living five days out of the week in a London bachelor flat - and with a wife who had been pregnant or postpartum for most of their married life. Anyone with a realistic grasp of human nature would assume... yes, of course they would. But in Hilary's experience the wife rarely did.

 _This isn't helping,_ she thought. _Not at all._

And then, prompted by a memory older and deeper: _I've betrayed myself, and him, to the powers of darkness. I've given in to the unforgivable. Again._

"And naturally divorce is impossible," David added.

It was no more than the truth. The General Medical Council did not look kindly upon a doctor being named a co-respondent in a divorce case - and in their case it would be necessary twice over.

Nonetheless Hilary was stunned. "Have you considered it?"

"No. Of course not."

This hardly answered her question, the real question, for she knew what he meant was that nothing was worth throwing away his career.

"Well, neither have I," she said boldly.

"Good," said David. "We understand one another."

But in fact, as Hilary knew, they understood one another not at all.


End file.
